A ‘people place’ by design

The Mazama Public House was conceived with community in mind

BY ASHLEY LODATO

If you want, you can spiral down an internet rabbit hole seeking to distinguish a “public house” from a “bar” or a “tavern” or a “restaurant.” You’ll get different answers, depending on the source.

But if you consider a “public house” from the perspective of its etymological roots (essentially “populus/poplicus/publicus” — “of the people”), you’ll learn that its inclusion in the name of Mazama’s new bar and eatery captures the spirit of the place perfectly.

It was, after all, in the interest of bringing the public — the community — together that the idea for the Mazama Public House was hatched.

“Mazama never really had a reliable place to gather at night, to have a beer, get something to eat, listen to music,” said Bill Pope, the primary investor and point person for the 35-investor Mazama-centric consortium called Grumpy Goats LLC, which took the Mazama Public House from idle talk to bustling establishment.

“There were occasionally events at the Mazama Community Club and of course the Mazama Store does an awesome job, but they’re never open late. There’s been a need for nightlife in Mazama.”

Most folks in Mazama agreed,

Pope said, “but no one knew how to do it or if it could be done economically and successfully.”

It was, paradoxically, the global event that shut down dining establishments for months that ended up laying the foundation for the Mazama Public House.

“There was a silver lining to COVID,” Pope said. “There were even more people than normal living in the upper valley. The consensus was that if we were ever going to develop this pub, it was a good time to try to light the fuse.”

Finding An Operator

The members of Grumpy Goats LLC knew that they didn’t want to run the pub. Pope, a former attorney for Microsoft and until recently co-owner of the Mazama Country Inn, is all-too familiar with the hospitality industry and knows that he didn’t want to become a pub operator.

“It’s one thing to build it, but it’s an entirely different thing to manage it,” Pope said. “If there had been anyone else who wanted to build it and run it, we would have deferred. But no one stepped up.”

So Pope went to Jacob Young, co-owner of Old Schoolhouse Brewery (OSB), with locations in Winthrop and Twisp. “It was a logical step to bring in OSB,” Pope said. “We love their product and they seem to have it figured out pretty well at their other locations. It was a natural thing to turn to them.”

Fortunately, OSB agreed to operate the Mazama Public House, because that is the only way the Grumpy Goats would let the project take flight. They had an operator; now they needed a building.

As former board president of the Methow Housing Trust, Pope was familiar with CAST Architecture, a Seattle-based architecture firm with a portfolio of residential and commercial spaces throughout the Methow Valley. CAST build the Housing Trust’s first neighborhood, on Canyon Street in Twisp.

“Coincidentally, Stefan [Hampden, principal at CAST] had a home in Mazama and one of his partners had designed the North Cascades Mountain Guides building next door. We wanted to design [the pub] to be in harmony with what was already there, so CAST made sense,” Pope said. CAST also put some skin in the game, becoming one of the investors in the project.

The Grumpy Goats formed a sub-committee of people who worked with CAST on the design of the public house, Pope said. “It went through several iterations, and we changed both the size and the orientation of the building, but we finally got it.”

Feeling At Home

Of thinking about big-picture features of designing a public gathering space Hampden said, “In some ways it’s kind of similar to the public space of a house. Obviously a house is more ‘refuge’ and a pub is more ‘prospect ’— welcoming people in — but the overall goal is to create a space that makes people feel at home and — in Mazama especially — opens up to the landscape that we all love.”

The location of the Mazama Public House presented some challenges, as it is sandwiched between Goat Creek Road and the Mazama Corral parking lot. The views across the road are wooded, but the soaring rocky cliffs of Flagg Mountain command respect, and it made sense to orient the pub toward the views.

To mitigate the visual impact of the parking area, CAST elevated the pub above ground level, which, according to Hampden, invites a view looking over the tops of the cars toward the mountains, as well as creating a snow skirt for the foundation in the winter.

Benches with solid backs as well as planters serve as screening devices, shielding pub guests from headlights. “It dissipates the fact that there is parking out there,” Hampden said. “The sight lines remain above the parking.”

Built by Bjornsen Construction, the Mazama Public House takes full advantage of the stunning outdoor vistas visible from its main indoor dining area, as well as from its patio space. Full-height, insulated, garage-style doors open up, “changing the boundary between inside and out,” Hampden said. Calling windows “borrowed space,” Hampden said that the garage-style doors “dissolve the wall and allow indoor-outdoor to happen.”

“Anyone who has spent time at the Mazama Store knows how the outdoor space energizes a business,” Hampden said, referring to the Mazama Store’s fabulous enclosed patio. “It makes a business feel like a place where you can hang out casually, you can come off the trail and greet friends, stay for a beer. It gives the pub this great open feel where people meet up in the outdoors and then extend that to gather to eat and drink together in a similar environment.” Hampden said that the long family-style tables in the Mazama Public House were part of the vision from the very beginning. “It is a public house, not a restaurant or bar,” he said. “The long communal tables were always indicative of the way we were thinking about the place. You come in and you’re part of the community. You share a table and suddenly you’re in conversation with a person you’ve never met before. It’s a fun opportunity.”

The pub’s name, Hampden said, came out of the realization that a “public house” was exactly what the group was trying to create. “It embodied what we were all seeking out of the project,” Hampden said.

Fitting In

If you know Mazama, you’ve seen it evolve from an isolated agricultural hamlet to a COVID refuge for urban remote workers. How did CAST balance Mazama’s pastoral roots with its increasingly upscale present?

Hamden said, “Part of the way we’ve approached design in Brooks Middleton Architect brooksmiddletonarchitect.com

Mazama is to use materials that have an honesty to them. Expose the wood, expose the concrete. There’s a humbleness in using materials in a way that isn’t overly precious but which celebrates the material for what it is.”

Hampden refers to a huge slab of fir claimed from investor Lee Whittaker’s Mazama property, used for the bar, accent shelving, and tables. “It’s a celebration of Douglas fir as a regional source of material,” he said.

He also addressed the pub’s design in terms of response to climate. “With hot summers and snowy winters, you want deep overhangs and shed roofs. They give you an easy way to access the building in the winter and they provide shade in the summer, as well as convenient options for outdoor space in the shoulder seasons. You design in a way that makes sense as a response to the place you’re building in.”

All that concrete, however, runs the risk of being loud and echoey. “It was a huge concern early on,” Hampden agrees. “Concrete is excellent for ease and durability, but the flip side is that it is bright and loud.”

Hampden noted that flat surfaces — whether wood or concrete — are the worst for acoustics. Inside the pub, the Douglas fir ceiling boards are backed by wool acoustic felt and are spaced at 1-inch intervals.

“It creates a cavity with deadening material inside,” Hampden said.

“It’s a technique that gets used in commercial projects like airports — you’ve seen those perforated wood panels and spaced decking. I’ve observed it in other projects. It employs basic engineering principles. I’ve never done it before myself, but I was delighted to see it work as it is supposed to.”

The result is that a band can play in the pub and the sound doesn’t preclude conversation and interaction.

Local Vision

Both Pope and Hampden agree that the most rewarding aspect of the Mazama Public House project is that, as Hampden said, “It came out of a vision for the community, not from a developer, not from a business plan. It was a local vision, with a huge consortium of local investors.”

Hampden acknowledged the critical role of the 34 other investors, but said that Pope has “put in a huge amount of his own time into making this happen. Bill has made Mazama feel like a more dynamic and livable place by creating this second, public space for people to inhabit. It has the potential to change the feeling of the community here.”

Hampden concluded, “The Mazama Public House will be valued in the community for a long time.”